It’s been five months since Matt Lauer lost his seat in the Today show chair amid a jarring litany of career-euthanizing sexual misconduct allegations. The assertions, as they were relayed in a series of bombshell press reports, portrayed a man who had essentially wielded his immense influence at NBC to consummate sexual relationships, some arguably verging on predatory, with female colleagues. The allegations were seemingly widespread and shocking—one incident involved a woman who reportedly required medical attention after a sexual encounter in Lauer’s office. And, rather notably, they spanned Lauer’s more than two-decade run as the leading man of television’s most revered and profitable morning show.

Lauer’s downfall was immediate. To his credit, NBC News chairman Andy Lack fired Lauer on November 29, just days after the human-resources department received a complaint detailing the anchor’s inappropriate conduct with a female colleague stemming back to the 2014 Sochi Olympics. At the time, Lack was firm yet equivocal. He said the complaint was the first that the network had received about Lauer during his career at NBC. But he also acknowledged, “We were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident.”

Indeed, in the following weeks, it emerged that Lauer’s reputation as a bad-boy lothario was perhaps one of the worst-kept secrets in TV news. It wasn’t dissimilar to how so many people apparently knew about the sprawling misbehavior of fellow fallen media men like Harvey Weinstein and Charlie Rose—and yet their alleged transgressions were kept out of the public eye for so long. How is it possible, some in media circles have subsequently wondered, that Lauer was enabled to behave in the workplace as he did for all that time? How is it possible NBC News didn’t realize it had a Lauer problem on its hands sooner than November? How is it possible that top executives such as Lack, who is close with Lauer dating back to his first stint atop the news division more than two decades ago, didn’t know, either?

This week, people inside and out of 30 Rock will be looking for answers to these questions when NBC releases the findings of a five-month inquest, led by NBCUniversal general counsel Kimberley Harris, into its #MeToo imbroglio. Harris and her team are putting the finishing touches on a report that is expected to be presented to management as early as today or Wednesday, and which is likewise expected to be made public thereafter. My understanding is that NBC has interviewed several dozen people about the Lauer affair, and while a spokesperson for the network wouldn’t comment on the probe, one presumes it included conversations with various top NBC News execs to whom Lauer has reported, such as Lack, Noah Oppenheim,Steve Capus,Jeff Zucker,Jim Bell,Patricia Fili-Krushel, and Deborah Turness. Who knew what, and how much did they know, and when?

The report will land two weeks after NBC News was hit with a Washington Post exposé highlighting #MeToo issues at the network. At the same time, it comes as rival network CBS News grapples with its own high-profile #MeToo crisis, which was re-ignited by last week’s second Washington Post exposé on Rose’s alleged sexual harassment and predatory behavior at the network. (“Your story is unfair and inaccurate,” Rose told the Post.) It’s also perhaps worth noting that the report will become public as Ronan Farrow—who left NBC News after it spiked the now-famous, Pulitzer-winning Weinstein investigation that Farrow subsequently took to The New Yorker, where he now works—continues his prolific streak of #MeToo journalism, most recently with a Jane Mayer co-production that took down New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman this week.

Given the manner in which #MeToo has been thrust back into the headlines, NBC's findings will be all the more closely scrutinized. Self-policing can have a fox-in-charge-of-the henhouse problem—so the report has to look like it has teeth in order to be taken seriously. “There’s no question there will be a fair amount riding on this,” said Andrew Heyward, an industry veteran who has served both as president of CBS News and a consultant to NBC News. “What’s at stake is, one, the external reputation of a news organization; two, the internal reputation of that news organization, being able to say to your employees, ‘We meant what we said, that we take this seriously, and we’ll hold people accountable as appropriate’; and three, changing the culture going forward.”

Lauer photographed interacting with friends outside of 30 Rock in June of 2017.

By Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images.

Following the initial aftershock of the Lauer bombshell, the Harris probe had more or less faded into the background, barely registering as a blip of gossip within the corridors of 30 Rock. That all changed on April 26, when The Washington Post published its exhaustive follow-up to the Lauer affair suggesting that NBC News’s #MeToo problems were more pervasive than previously believed. “NBC acted quickly to dismiss Lauer, but it is facing a wave of internal and outside skepticism that it can reform a workplace in which powerful men such as Lauer were known to pursue sexual relationships with more junior women,” my former Vanity Fair colleague Sarah Ellison wrote. “In interviews, 35 current and former NBC staffers said that while some of these relationships were consensual, some were not. Twelve women interviewed said they were sexually harassed but did not report it.” The most bewildering part of the story involved previously undisclosed sexual harassment allegations against revered broadcaster Tom Brokaw, who vigorously disputed his accuser’s detailed account of an unwanted late-night hotel-room come-on in the 90s. (Lauer, likewise, has said that “any allegations or reports of coercive, aggressive, or abusive actions on my part, at any time, are absolutely false.”) The story also, however, included a comment from former Today co-anchor Ann Curry—who said she had informed NBC News brass during her tenure that “they had a problem” with Lauer and “needed to keep an eye on him and how he deals with women.”

On April 27, in response to the Post report, Lack sent a memo to employees reiterating how seriously the network takes “allegations such as these,” while also announcing that “the review is nearing its conclusion, and we will have findings and further steps to share with you as soon as next week.” In addition to the Lauer component, NBC retained a professional facilitator in recent months to conduct small focus groups of eight employees at a time, in which participants were asked how the company could make its workplace environment as safe and comfortable as possible. As many as 250 employees participated in these sessions, according to a person familiar with the matter.

NBC News also instituted mandatory workplace-behavior training that it expects all 2,000 of its employees to complete by the end of this summer. (Lack said in his April 27 staff note that 1,600 of them had completed the training as of that date.) A woman who has gone through the training—now a common requirement at many media organizations (including Condé Nast, our parent company)—told me that women in her orbit at 30 Rock are “of two minds.” They “appreciate that they’re trying,” she said, “but it’s also, like, is this just lip service? Are you just worried about being sued, or are you really trying to change the culture?” NBC News has faced criticism for doing the review internally as opposed to hiring an outside firm. Harris, however, has Mueller-esque credentials. She was a member of the White House counsel’s office, as well as senior counsel to the assistant attorney general under President Barack Obama. The decision to conduct the review in-house was made at the corporate level, under the say-so of NBCUniversal C.E.O. Stephen Burke, as opposed to Lack.

It was Lack who, in 1997, moved Lauer into one of the leading roles on Today following the departure of Bryant Gumbel. Lack left NBC in 2003 and returned to once again head up the news division in 2015 following stints at Sony, Bloomberg, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which means there was a 12-year period in which any Lauer problems would not have been his to deal with. Still, there are those both inside the network and out who can’t wrap their heads around how Lack—or other past NBC News leaders—could have been completely in the dark that Lauer had a certain reputation behind the scenes. One such person posited that maybe Lack, like many others, knew Lauer was “a player, but that’s different from predatory behavior.”

Whatever the results of NBC’s investigation, there’s already a sense inside 30 Rock that the tide has turned, and that employees are now operating in a more accountable environment than they were before the Lauer scandal. In addition to the corporate edicts about workplace behavior, some managers have gone out of their way to make sure workers feel empowered to say something if they see something. A Morning Joe staffer, for instance, told me that engaged co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have been especially proactive about making their team feel safe and comfortable. “They’d come into the office and say”—paraphrasing—“Look, we know you’re reading the headlines. We take this really, really seriously. We can’t emphasize enough the different ways you can be heard or make a complaint and it will not be punished.” As another veteran network executive I spoke with put it, “Let’s all take a deep breath and see what the report says. It should only worry about one group: the employees. Does it give confidence that the company takes culture concerns seriously?”